San Jose murder case connects San Francisco gang politics of past and present – The Mercury News

San Jose murder case connects San Francisco gang politics of past and present  The Mercury News

One of the suspects has been on police's radar for years, including in the killing of Oakland baker Jen Angel and a series of other violent crimes that authorities say all go back to the Double Rock gang. Fifteen years ago, Cyrill Hanna IV’s life was not too different from that of one of the young men who now stands accused of killing him in a shooting on a San Jose city street. Hanna was jailed in 2010 as part of a major gang sweep targeting a group called BNT, based in San Francisco, whose members were charged with homicides, robberies, and nonfatal shootings. Hanna got relatively lucky; he avoided a murder conviction and was sentenced to prison for robbery.

For the next decade and a half, his life would be fraught, with incarceration, dealings with police, and repeated promises and expressions of hope for a better tomorrow. “I was locked in a cage when one of my grandmothers I grew to be very close to passed away. Even more recently, I was locked in a cage when my mother passed away and as more and more time passes away, I reflect,” Hanna wrote to a federal judge who sentenced him to prison for gun possession in 2022. “I spent ‘all’ of my teens in a box which turned into